


Drop of Rum on My Tongue

by JupiterOrchid



Category: Overlord (2018)
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, F/M, Ficlet, M/M, Moving Out, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Racism, The 50s are coming?, Unresolved, i don't even know what this is, snapshot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:41:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25044067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JupiterOrchid/pseuds/JupiterOrchid
Summary: Tibbet is trying to get Boyce out of Louisiana - a ficlet that goes nowhere.
Relationships: Edward Boyce/Chloe, Jacob Rosenfeld/Lyle Tibbet
Kudos: 3





	Drop of Rum on My Tongue

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from the song I'll Be Good by Jaymes Young

Tibbet is trying to get Boyce out of Louisiana. In his letters, he writes, _you really want to bring Chloe into that hick-hole of a state?_ He writes, _there’s helluva vet program at Cornell or a thousand other colleges all over New York._ Really, Tibbet is just worried about the KKK.

Up here, in New York, one just hears things. But it’s different down there, and now, bringing Chole up, all blonde hair, blue eyes, alabaster skin, with a kid that looks more the age of her son than her brother? It’s a bad idea all around because, last he heard, Chloe actually is coming and how’s that gonna look, war hero or not... And she’s getting ready to cross the ocean, make a new life, leave Europe and all it’s horrors in the rear-view mirror, for greener pastures and all that. And Boyce wants her right back in the heat of it? Wants her in the stares from all the neighbours, and the threats shouted in the town square? Wants men in white hoods, with lit torches, surrounding their house like a second layer to their dream white-picket fence, trampling over their freshly cut grass and freshly-planted tomatoes, gearing for their necks? What is the man thinking? Tibbet shivers from just the thought of it, and he’s _been_ to war.

New York, on the other hand, now there’s a bastion of freedom! Progressive, exciting, good deli, too!

Tibbet says: “come on, man, help me convince him.”

Jacob is shirtless and lying on the floor because it’s July and the concrete jungle is melting under the weight of a heat wave. All of their windows are open, the light, white curtains Rosenfeld put up are hardly moving under the fingers of the barely-there breeze.

“Lyle,” Jacob reaches his arm up and grasps at Tibbet’s ankle, cool fingers sending shivers all the way up Tibbet’s spine, “he’ll come if he wants to. You can’t force someone to up and move.”

“Chloe is moving,” Tibbet reasons, and then softer: “you moved.”

Rosenfeld smirks that boyish smirk of his. Tibbet always forgets that he’s only a year younger.

“I _wanted_ to move,” he says looking up at him, chocolate-brown eyes sparkling with a smirk. He tugs at Tibbet’s ankle but only half-heartedly, it’s too hot for effort.

“Yeah, and what made you?” Tibbet smirks down at him, chews on the end of his pencil.

“Oh, you know,” Jacob plays coy, “some dude I decided to follow.”

“Some dude?” Lyle asks, smirk predatory as he frees up his ankle only to land on his knees next to Jacob.

“Yep,” Jacob smirks, “some dude.”

“Was it worth it?” Tibbet asks, reaching for Jacob’s face.

Rosenfeld makes a face like he’s thinking, “Hmmm,” he says, “Nah, I don’t think so.”

“Don’t think so?” Tibbet fakes outrage, letting his fingers pinch at Jacob’s sides, “don’t think so?!”

Jacob laughs, snakes his arms around Tibbet’s neck and pulls him forward, “aha,” he mumbles before pulling the man on top of him for a kiss.

“Hmmm,” Jacob hums again, “I might change my mind though.”

“Yeah?” Tibbet mumbles into Jacob’s lips before kissing him again.

After a long time, Jacob pushes at his chest.

“Alright,” he says, breathing hard, sweat making his hair curl at the nape of his neck, dappling his forehead, “get off, big guy,” he tells Tibbet.

“Already?” Tibbet feels a little breathless, and then, before letting go, adds: “change your mind yet?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jacob agrees, sounding like he’d agree to anything right now only to get Tibbet off him, “now get off, it’s too hot for this.”

Tibbet chuckles, goes back to his desk, and pencil, and unfinished letter.

He’s trying to get Boyce out of Louisiana. And if that means having him and Chloe and the kid closer to them, well, that’s just bonus.

***  
Boyce agrees for a visit. It’s a good thing the heat wave is over, though of course Louisiana is just as hot if not hotter this time of year so, really, the New York summer climate is nothing to worry about as far as “selling points” go.

He times his visit with Chloe and Paul’s arrival. The three friends meet them at the Pier together, take a cab back to Queens and Tibbet’s “ancestral” row-house home. It’s not much to write home about: dark brick with black cornices over the bay windows, a stone porch, iron guard rails. But it’s got three bedrooms and a tiny kitchen with a table that they squeeze four chairs around, a wireless in the living room that Paul is very excited about.

Chloe sleeps through the whole first day, Boyce and Rosenfeld talk in hushed voices in the kitchen.

“It’s not that bad,” Boyce tells him, and Jacob can see he’s holding something back. Not that bad in compared to what? The horrors of France? Jacob doesn’t want to push it, but he worries at the inside of his cheek as Boyce is talking.

“How am I supposed to leave my family?” he says finally. Tibbet is out, getting something for dinner.

“I’m sorry,” Jacob says, squeezing his arm. What else can he say, really.

At night, Jacob holds Lyle’s hand in the darkness.

“He doesn’t want to leave his family,” Jacob whispers.

“Chloe left,” Lyle whispers back to him.

“Chloe had noting left to leave,” Jacob reminds him and it’s still painful, the thought of all those people, gone.

“What about this family,” Tibbet tries a different approach and then, as if to clarify, adds: “the one he wants to start _with_ her.”

“You really think it would be easier for them here?” Jacob asks.

“Not easy,” Tibbet concedes, “but yeah, easier.”

Jacob can’t argue with that. It was easier to come here than have Tibbet come to him. And Lyle offered. Even though he loved Queens, even though he felt they would be safer here. He’d offered because he had no one left, because they’ve gone through war to find each other, because they were separated long enough after Ciel Blanc, because they were meant to be together. Jacob had a family, two brothers that survived the war and a sister, a mother who was still living, an uncle and two cousins… but New York was better. Not good, but better. And Lyle had a place for him. Jacob had a bedroom he shared with his youngest brother in a full house of people struggling to put their lives back together after years of fighting a war on all fronts. Tibbet had nothing but space.

“It’s up to them,” Jacob reasons, feeling Tibbet squeeze his hand.

“Maybe if I talk to Chloe,” Tibbet says, a little wistfully.

“She’s French,” Jacob says as if he meant, _she won’t understand the danger._

***

It was a good visit. Central park, Chinatown, Little Italy, Tibbet even took Paul to see a Mets game… And then by the end of it, Boyce took Chloe and Paul back to Louisiana.

“We have to try,” he told Jacob and Tibbet as they were seeing them off.

“They’ll kill you,” Tibbet told him as they were hugging goodbye.

“I won’t let that happen,” Ed promised him and if it were enough to assuage Tibbet’s fears, maybe he would’ve slept better that night.

As it were, he keeps tossing and turning until finally giving up on sleep altogether.

Jacob finds him in the living room, illuminated only by the glow of the streetlights outside the window.

There is no point in asking him to come back to bed, so Jacob draws the curtains closed, and lays down on the couch, his head resting on Tibbet’s thigh.

“You can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped,” Jacob says as Tibbet lets his fingers run through Jacob’s hair. He let it grow longer since they’ve come back and now it’s curling softly at the ends. Jacob lets himself feel Tibbet’s fingers scrubbing gently at his scalp, those fingers that killed so many people they might as well have been dripping with blood. They’ve both killed people but Tibbet’s scores have crossed the hundred mark before the war was over.

And so, there are nights when he wakes up in cold sweat, eyes flying open to only be met by darkness. Those are the nights he reaches for Jacob most, those are the nights he needs to be held instead of holding, needs to feel protected instead of protecting. But they’re rare. Otherwise, Tibbet is all about telling the people that matter what the right thing to do is to stay safe. Like keep a spare bedroom with a bed made at all times or keep a distance between them when they’re walking on the sidewalk or try talking Ed into moving across the country.

“They’ll kill them,” Tibbet says into Jacob’s hair.

“We’re all on borrowed time, anyway,” Jacob tells him and it’s not a comfort, not really, but there is a truth to it that doesn’t ring as hollow in the dark of night as it might in the light of day.

Jacob was supposed to die in that laboratory, tar pumping into his insides. Tibbet was supposed to step on a mine in the forest or eat a bullet amongst the rubble of Ciel Blanc. It was the same for Chloe, the same for Ed, probably even Paul.

But they didn’t. They were given a chance, against all odds, to keep living, and make choices and do the things they thought were right.

For Tibbet it was to corner Jacob behind the medical tent, before they were reassigned. To take his face in his hands, to say _just in case we don’t make it,_ and kiss into Jacob’s warm open mouth.

For Jacob it was to kiss back, to make sure they did make it. To come back, and to tell his mum he’s moving, going to New York and hey, someday, come visit.

And for Ed it was to go back to Louisiana. And maybe come back, someday, for good. Or maybe not.

But it was his choice to make, just as it was Tibbet’s choice to extend the invitation.

No one could’ve made it for him. So, Jacob reaches up and kisses Tibbet into his warm open mouth and says: “let’s go back to bed.”

And Tibbet says: “Let’s.”

**Author's Note:**

> I guess I needed a break from all my other fandoms cuz I have stuff on the go but I've been really sick so I haven't been writing much. 
> 
> When I'm sick I watch horror movies, but only during the day so they're not so scary. Overlord was one of those movies and then this happened. I don't even know who this is for. 
> 
> Probably just for myself.


End file.
